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Re: Do frequency adverbs come before the contractions?

Originally Posted by atabitaraf

In the book Digest which is a book on grammar, I read, frequency adverbs come before the contractions. How much can I rely on this statement?

I would take it with a grain of salt. The contractions you've used are all negations. Sometimes the effect is different.
5a. "I can't usually come." 5b "I usually can't come." These mean close enough to the same thing and are both acceptable.
6a. "I sometimes can't stand her!" 6b. "I can't sometimes stand her!" Only 6a is correct and colloquial. (Agrees with your rule).
7a. "I often don't understand her." 7b. "I don't often understand her." This one disagrees with your rule. 7a tends to mean that you understand her more often than 7b.
So, it depends on the adverb.

Re: Do frequency adverbs come before the contractions?

Originally Posted by 5jj

There's a typo - One of the '7b's should be '7a'. However, I am not sure which - which must mean That I don't agree, whichever it is,

My claim is that 7a. "I often don't understand her" is less serious than 7b. "I don't often understand her."
A man who doesn't often understand his wife is worse off than one who often doesn't understand her. I think that 7a has more of a connotation of "Sometimes I don't understand my wife", while 7b. connotes, "I rarely understand her."
But I'm not going to insist on this. It's not the best example. But I do still hold that there can be different connotations depending on whether the adverb comes first.

9a. "I don't often take my car to work."
9b. "I often don't take my care to work." (9a implies less often than 9b) - at least to me. The context in which these sentences are used probably makes the difference.

Re: Do frequency adverbs come before the contractions?

Originally Posted by Raymott

My claim is that 7a. "I often don't understand her" is less serious than 7b. "I don't often understand her."
A man who doesn't often understand his wife is worse off than one who often doesn't understand her. I think that 7a has more of a connotation of "Sometimes I don't understand my wife", while 7b. connotes, "I rarely understand her."
But I'm not going to insist on this. It's not the best example. But I do still hold that there can be different connotations depending on whether the adverb comes first.

9a. "I don't often take my car to work."
9b. "I often don't take my care to work." (9a implies less often than 9b) - at least to me. The context in which these sentences are used probably makes the difference.

I tend to agree with you, but these nuances only work when the speaker/writer and the listener/reader have the same thought pattern.